A lecture series on psychopathy in the wild and in prison will be making its way to Tauranga this month.

The free lecture series will feature a different lecture each month and will cover thought provoking research from a range of guest speakers.

Professor of psychology and crime science Devon Polaschek will be this month's speaker at the Trinity Wharf on Thursday, July 20.

In her lecture ‘Mean, misunderstood, and mistreated: Psychopathy in the wild and in prison', she will talk about modern scientific understandings of psychopathy.

'Psychopathy is a widely misunderstood form of personality disorder. News media, films and television shows often depict sadists, criminal masterminds and evil dictators as suffering from psychopathy, but these depictions bear little resemblance to most of the people identified as psychopathic by scientific methods,” says Devon.

'Psychopathy is more complex, more interesting, and at the same time, more ordinary than it first appears.”

Through her longstanding research programme on high-risk violent prisoners, she will discuss how some people become psychopathic criminals, whether they can be released safely into the wilds of our communities again, and whether the psychological treatments made available to them are helping them change their psychopathy.

Devon works in the University of Waikato's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the newly established Institute of Security and Crime Science.

She completed a Diploma in Clinical Psychology at the University of Canterbury and a PhD at Victoria University.

Her research expertise include criminal behaviour, violent offending, imprisonment parole, sexual offending, offender rehabilitation, offender reintegration, family violence perpetrators and what works with offenders.

This lecture, which was originally held in Hamilton, is free and open to the public, no registration is required.

Doors open at 5.30pm and the lecture starts at 6.00pm. Light refreshments will be available.